Reflections on 2008 Candlelight Vigil in Republic of Korea

• 발행기관: 한국민중신학회
• 저자명: Kim Hyun
• 간행물 정보: 『Madang: Journal of Contextual Theology』제14권, 1~10쪽, 전체 10쪽
• 주제분류: 인문학 > 기독교신학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2010.12.31

영문 초록

On June 10, 2008, nearly 500,000 citizens gathered around Seoul City Hall and marched toward the Blue House, President Lee Myung-bak’s office. When including those people who joined the demonstration through cyberspace, the number of participants was presumed to reach more than 1 million. This was the time a candlelight vigil turned into a national movement that attracted the attention of global society. Even though the government tried to persuade people to identify the candlelight vigil with “leftist and anti-U.S. demonstrations,” at this moment the government could not help but acknowledge it was a nationalist movement par excellence. This paper aims to describe how the candlelight vigil evolved into such a nationalist movement. The government and “conservative” mass media tried to quell the protest, coloring the candlelight vigil as an “ideological” movement. Against this characterization, the candlelight protest proved to be a nationalist movement. This article shows how the candlelight vigil coped with the Korean version of McCarthyism. Also, it deals with the peculiar characteristics of the sovereign nation in the candlelight protest. As the candlelight vigil appeared as a nationalist movement, the situation of double sovereignty (Tilly, 1978) occurred. What was unique was that there was no political representative of the sovereign nation in the movement, which invoked controversy between participants and opponents. I argue that contrary to both parties’ contentions, the national sovereignty of the candlelight vigil was not power but authority and the sovereign nation was the nation in accusative who had the authority over the nation as the first person.